‘Accelerate Action’. It’s a rallying, inspiring worldwide call, and it was the theme for International Women’s Day was last Saturday 8th March. We really enjoyed seeing everyone come together in their own way to celebrate the achievements of women across the world, and it’s also given us a lot of food for thought here at Absolute IT…
Reading through the IWD resources, we were shocked to learn that current data suggests it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity. With that in mind, it feels like the right time to have an honest conversation about women in tech, here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Yes, progress has been made, and we should celebrate it. But there’s still work to be done. According to the most recent data, women constitute only 29% of New Zealand’s digital technology workforce.
So, what can we do? Here are my thoughts on the gender parity challenge for our tech sector and ideas for practical solutions that might help solve it—with big thanks and reference to the excellent resources at IWD.com.
“‘Accelerate Action’ emphasises the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality. It calls for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.”
Uncovering The Real Source
There’s always chat in the market about getting more girls and young women into STEM. While building a pipeline of talent is part of the solution to getting more women into tech careers, there’s also another pressing problem: women are leaving tech at nearly twice the rate of men. A global study by Accenture found that women leave tech roles at a 45% higher rate than men with similar patterns observed across the Asia-Pacific region
The truth is, hiring more women isn’t enough if they don’t stay.
If NZ tech businesses are serious about closing the gender gap, there needs to be a focus beyond increasing entry-level hiring. Collectively, we need to tackle the widely acknowledged barriers that women face, such as lack of career progression and exclusionary cultures. It may feel awkward to acknowledge these issues (“..surely not in MY organisation”), but it’s important to recognise these are real, systemic issues that are well supported by current research.
So, how do we fix these issues? We do need a strong pipeline—but that’s just the start. There are lots of other ways we can accelerate change and make the tech industry a space where women thrive.
First: The Pipeline Problem
In New Zealand, only 25% of IT graduates are women, and similar patterns exist across the Asia-Pacific region. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that there aren’t enough women entering the tech industry. In my reading and research, I found this pipeline problem goes back well over ten years, so I think that our approach and any solutions need a bit of a refresh. Here are three ideas that channel the IWD theme to #AccelerateAction.
1. Move Beyond ‘Awareness’
Students need more than just information about tech careers. Young women need real opportunities, positive role models, and easy access. There’s definitely fantastic stuff happening in the market, for example, initiatives like “ShadowTech Day” where female students shadow women in tech roles. But what we need is more investment on a sustained basis; more industry partnerships with schools, more hands-on coding programmes and more exposure to what a tech career actually looks like, from an early age.
2. Expand the Idea of the ‘Tech Job’
Unfortunately, there remains a bit of a misconception about what a tech job can be, and this significantly impacts young women’s participation. Studies from organisations like Girls Who Code and UNESCO show that many women have interests that align perfectly with tech careers, but they don’t recognise the connection. For example, women interested in healthcare often don’t realise how technology roles can directly impact patient care through healthtech innovations. We need to redefine tech careers, highlighting non-traditional tech roles e.g. UX design, product management etc., and build more industry partnerships with regular career talks, internships and networking events targeted at women.
3. Role Models in the Media
Another aspect to consider is representation. We need more positive portrayals of women in diverse tech roles in media and marketing campaigns—it truly makes a difference. Have you seen that LinkedIn post about ‘The Scully Effect? This is a phenomenon where the character Dana Scully from The X Files inspired women to pursue careers in STEM fields—and it’s supported by empirical data. Highlighting local women succeeding in varied tech roles creates powerful, relatable role models for our young people.
4. Fix The First Step
The final part of the pipeline solution is to fix the ‘first step’ aspect of the problem. There are many indicators that suggest that women are being hired at lower rates than men, for entry-level tech roles. This can be fixed by auditing hiring processes to remove bias from job descriptions, assessments, and interview panels. The good news is that doing this is likely to be beneficial beyond supporting gender diversity, and will enhance diversity more broadly, increasing creativity and innovation, as well as having a positive impact on Employer brand.
The Dropout Crisis
Getting more women into tech isn’t enough if they then face blockers at every step of their careers. Women in tech are much more likely to leave this sector than their male colleagues, and leave tech roles at much higher rates than other types of jobs (50% vs 20%).
The percentage of women in tech in NZ is already low, and by mid-career, the gender gap in leadership becomes massive. The reasons are multifaceted: women don’t get promoted at the same rates as men, there are cultural challenges that push women out rather than welcome them in, and a ‘motherhood penalty’ faced by women with caregiving responsibilities. However, despite the complexity of these issues, there are steps that can be taken. To #AcccerlateAction, here’s what organisations can do right now:
1. Shift From Mentorship to Sponsorship
Women in tech don’t lack knowledge or skills, but they do lack equitable access to the informal power and recognition structures that drive career advancement. While traditional mentorship, with guidance, feedback, and advice is great (and no doubt appreciated!), alone it’s not enough. This is why a pivot to Sponsorship is needed. The role of a Sponsor is to actively advocate for women in places where decisions are made, and where women are often underrepresented or absent. Companies with formal sponsorship programmes, for example Mastercard, Cisco, and SAP, show significantly higher rates of women in leadership positions.
2. Take a Close Look at Promotion Rates
Slower promotion rates for women exists across most industries, but studies consistently show that the tech industry has particularly pronounced disparities, especially in leadership roles. Fortunately, we’ve seen some Kiwi companies like Xero and TradeMe making public commitments to gender-balanced leadership teams with measurable targets, but improvement is needed across the board. The first step is to understand what is happening within your own organisation; this means auditing promotion data to understand whether women are moving up at the same rate as men.
Some of the practical, actionable tactics we uncovered during research which can be used to balance promotion rates include:
- Creating and publishing clear criteria for advancement and ensuring this is transparent throughout the business;
- Sharing promotion statistics;
- Addressing any possible bias in performance reviews, for example, training your managers to recognise and avoid common gender biases; and
- Creating early leadership exposure for women with potential in your organisation, for example, rotational programmes that provide experience across functions.
Non-negotiables: Flexibility and Parental Policies
Despite the roll-back of remote and hybrid work arrangements that happened in some NZ sectors in 2024, it’s great to see that NZ tech employers have mostly retained their spot at the forefront of this fundamental shift towards flexible working.
So we’re starting with a decent base, but expansion, change, and embedding is needed to ensure the retention of women. This is because the challenges for women at the mid-to-senior level often include balancing caregiving responsibilities with progression, managing inflexible core hours, or navigating workplace cultures that can value in-office presence over output.
Changes that would help are:
- Results-based performance evaluations;
- Parental leave policies that don’t penalise career progression;
- Mentorships that take into account flexibility needs;
- Leadership development that doesn’t require traditional ‘full time in the office’ presence;
It would also be great to see a challenging of assumptions that link availability with commitment to the business. Let’s showcase more senior women who work flexibly!
Final Thoughts
We definitely need a stronger pipeline, and it would be great to see tech organisations investing further in helping to build this up. However, if women entering tech keep leaving in droves, we’re patching a broken firewall with duct tape.
Any approach to enhancing gender diversity in the tech sector needs to go beyond hiring. There’s lots of great potential tech talent out there, but there’s already so many talented women in the market right now! We need to tackle the systemic issues that keep women from staying and thriving in our industry, and ideally track our progress, because what gets measured, gets fixed. Women in tech are essential for innovation, profitability, and creating technology that truly works for everyone.
So what do you think? I hope I’ve inspired you to #AccelerateAction! If you’d like to carry on the conversation, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
